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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26459335">step with me</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/badlesbian/pseuds/badlesbian'>badlesbian</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood &amp; Manga</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>M/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 07:35:33</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>645</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26459335</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/badlesbian/pseuds/badlesbian</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>for the anonymous tumblr prompt: "Roy had to teach maes how to dance for a ball at the academy and that was when he fell in love with him send tweet"</p><p>oddly enough this is my second hyuroi dancing fic. that's not on purpose i just think it suits them</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Maes Hughes/Roy Mustang</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>34</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>step with me</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>the song they are listening to is <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5JporiR9oM">this</a> if you want an official soundtrack to this fic</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It seemed like a decent proposition - what’s the point of knowing the ins and outs of high society if not to help your best friend pick up girls at a strictly formal ball? Madame Christmas had taught him those skills for a reason; the least Roy could do was to make sure Maes didn't step on the feet of whatever poor girl wound up dancing with him.</p><p>They struck up a deal, because everything had to be - (I’ll proofread your essay for a cigarette, you’ll cover for me in training if I give you my shower time, I’ll do your damn laundry if you shut the hell up for 10 minutes). He was in Hughes’ room most nights anyway - Hughes had seniority, which meant his own room, which meant enough privacy for him and Roy to do what they felt like. Most of the time that meant Roy lying on the ground trying to convince himself to study while Maes lay on the bunk and tried to convince him not to. Maes knew how to draw, so sometimes they’d pass a bottle back and forth and play their version of pictionary. Sometimes they’d finish the bottle and talk til it was past late and their eyes were burning more than their throats.</p><p>And now they added a new routine to their repetoire - they’d stall long enough for the cigarette Roy bummed off Maes to burn down to his fingers (he let it, had a high pain tolerance and an odd fascination, or maybe he just didn’t get burned), and then Roy’d haul him up by whatever part of Hughes he thought would be funniest, and they’d start class.</p><p>Here’s the thing:</p><p>Obviously Maes was attractive. Roy knew that. Everyone knew that, except the rest of the guys at the academy. You didn’t live joined at the hip for 18 months and not know a guy was hot. But Roy’d known a lot of hot guys in his life and he’d only fucked a couple of them, so it seemed like a nonissue.</p><p>Here’s the other thing:</p><p>Things change when you start teaching him how to hold you.</p><p>Hughes wasn’t a dancer, but from the care in his touch, the natural gentleness in the way he smoothed his hands down Roy’s back, you’d think he was a lover. They really should have been more self-conscious, two slow dancers under one crackling fluorescent, nothing but Hughes' tinny little <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5JporiR9oM">radio</a> to cut the silence, but, well. It was only them, after all. Only friends, and that was enough.</p><p>Roy had to believe that. All other roads lead to nothing at best, and at worst, something entirely out of character. He had to believe that, or he’d start walking down one of them.</p><p>So he played along, the shadow of a lover, temporary but educational, and he laughed when they got off-center and Maes’ everpresent stubble scratched his temple, and he teased when he made Hughes take his boots off to prevent scuff marks (but mostly to save his own toes), and he only got knocked into the desk’s cruelly sharp corners a few times.</p><p>Three weeks later, Roy straightened Maes’ bowtie and shoved him off in the general direction of a few pretty girls not currently holding drinks, and if he pushed him a little harder than absolutely strictly friendly, well, that was on his conscience.</p><p>And if he breathed in his dance partner’s perfume and imagined sweat and starch, and if he resented being the one to lead, and if later that night he lay in bed and wished for gentle hands on his skin and strong arms around his waist, well, that was on his conscience.</p><p>And years later, if he watched two slow dancers under a canopy of lights, matching gold bands glowing under artifical stars, and wished one of them was for him? </p><p>Well.</p>
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